Imagine being a 19-year-old college student taking a job at UPS to help pay for school and three months into the job, you’re promoted to part-time supervisor. Suddenly, you’re in charge of 40- and 50-year-olds who may have 20 years with the company. No one would fault a person for having imposter syndrome in that situation.
In 1977, it happened to Noel Massie and he decided he had to figure it out and that’s what he did. During his tenure with the company, he was promoted seven more times, ultimately to vice president of U.S. delivery operations. He retired from UPS in 2019, after 42 years on the job and all but the first three months of that were in leadership.
He attributes much of his success to seeking out mentors from varied backgrounds at every level of his career, and he’s paid that forward by being a longtime mentor himself. Additionally, he served as chairman of the board of the Los Angeles Urban League in 2011 and in 2014, he was chairman of the board for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the second largest chamber in the country. He was the first African American to hold that position.
His new book, “Congrats! You’ve Been Promoted,” details many of the lessons he’s learned along the way and it’s uniquely positioned because it hits a niche underserved by the business-leadership genre that tends to be aimed at entrepreneurs and CEOs who aspire to lead Fortune 500 companies or billion-dollar tech startups. This book is targeted to young leaders who are likely at the beginning of their leadership journey. Those, like him, who may have been recently put in charge of a diverse team of team members across ages and cultural backgrounds. How does one learn how to lead with confidence, integrity and get the best from their teams? Massie’s book is structured as a values-driven guide for young managers.
“I actually thought about writing a book 10 years ago,” says Massie. “When I retired, I dedicated myself to it. It took me three and a half years to write this book. I worked with a professional book coach because my career taught me that when you don’t know something, find an expert to teach it to you.”
The book was born from Massie’s direct exposure to what he calls “the volume of young people being promoted” and the widespread lack of structured guidance to support them.
“As someone who mentors extensively – I have six mentees under 40 at the moment – and as the father of two millennial sons, I am very familiar with that cohort,” he says. “I felt compelled to give aspiring leaders a clear set of principles that stand the test of time.”
From those years of reflection and guided writing came a leadership philosophy shaped by personal mentors, hard lessons, and a career spanning frontline operations to the presidency of a major organization.
One of the strongest threads through Massie’s story is the profound impact of early mentorship. At 20 years old, he supervised part of a distribution facility with roughly 100 employees. Watching the company president interact with those on the frontlines left a mark that would shape his leadership forever.
“The president, Joe Lancaster, would walk the floor all the time,” Massie says. “He’d come into the operation and meet and talk with every management member. There was no such thing as someone too small. I would have run through a wall for Joe. Why? Because I knew he cared about me.”
That early experience defined how he would lead throughout his career. No matter how high he climbed, he stayed grounded in the belief that leadership is fundamentally about showing people they matter.
“The flesh and bone of every company are the frontline leaders,” he says. “They’re not the CEO, they’re not the president. They’re the people who do the work, and when frontline employees feel valued, not only do they perform better, but the entire culture rises.”
Among the core messages in Massie’s book is a deceptively simple truth: talent and intelligence are rarely what determine a leader’s success. A person’s career will be determined by their behavior. In more than four decades, Massie saw very few leaders lose their jobs over technical issues or slow productivity. Instead, he saw careers break because of lapses in judgment, questionable actions, or ethical gray zones.
Massie’s emphasis on ethics stems not only from his professional life but also from formative personal experiences. He shares a story from his childhood about his grandfather, a deeply principled barber who also worked as a porter on a passenger train, which exposed him to many cultures. The wisdom he imparted was to develop a strong work ethic and be careful about the relationships you choose.
The primary pillar of the book is also the enduring throughline in “Congrats! You’ve Been Promoted” that Massie calls “terms and conditions.” And yes, this is a direct comparison to the terms and conditions we agree to when downloading any app, software or accepting our refrigerator warranty.
“Every employee brings a set of non-negotiables to work: values like trust, dignity, fairness, and honesty,” he says. “When those terms are violated, people disengage – and often leave. You can’t lead someone well unless you understand their non-negotiables.”
For this reason, his advice to new leaders is extremely tactical: meet individually with every team member in your first days on the job. Spend 30 minutes with each person. And don’t talk about metrics, sales performance, or workloads.
“Talk about values and what matters,” he says. “You can’t just express values, you need to state them clearly. You set the terms and conditions intentionally and if you ask the right questions, you’ll quickly understand your team member’s terms and conditions.”
One of the strongest themes emerging from Massie’s stories is the constant visibility of leaders. Every word, every action, every omission – all of it is watched, interpreted, and remembered by their teams.
“Once, during a severe weather event that affected operations around the country, I delivered a message to all my teams: ‘If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt – we’re not doing it,’” he says. “Months later, a frontline driver approached me to thank me. He said, ‘My manager told us something you said; if it’s unsafe, don’t do it. I want to thank you for that.’”
Too often, he observed leaders who believed they were too busy or too important to stay present with their teams. But nothing erodes trust faster. Or, as he says, “Arrogance is the enemy of excellence in leadership.”
The message of his book is straightforward. It is, in many ways, old-school: treat people with integrity, know what matters to them, stay close to the work, and model the behaviors you hope to see. These are the very principles Massie believes today’s workplace urgently needs. No amount of automation or technological advances will replace leading with integrity and treating people the way you would want to be treated.
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